You may or may not respect what Pete Rose does for a living, which boils down to signing his name for money on the Las Vegas Strip.

No, not out on the street. After his autobiography, My Prison Without Bars, was released in January of 2004, Rose began a six-year run selling signed books, balls, jerseys, etc., inside the Caesars Palace mall. This year, he’s been at the Mirage, which is where Sporting News recently interviewed him for a story in the current edition of the magazine.

He doesn’t just pop in once in a while, either; in May, for example, he worked 22 days. But Rose--who says, “You’re only as old as you act and as old as you look, and I don’t look or act my age”--is 70 now. Whether or not his associations with Las Vegas hurt his chances at being reinstated by major league baseball or accepted into the Hall of Fame, you’d think he might tire the autograph business. How much longer can he do this?

At least five more years, it turns out.

The news has yet to be announced in Vegas or in sports memorabilia circles, but Sporting News has learned that Rose has a guaranteed five-year, multimillion-dollar deal to serve as the main attraction in a memorabilia exhibit that is planned to open at the Luxor Hotel & Casino in September.

Rose will be paid by Hit King Inc., a business headed by chairman Bob Friedland and president Joiie Casey, both of whom confirmed the deal along with Rose. A member of the Luxor’s executive staff also confirmed the new exhibit is expected to open in the late summer or early fall.

Friedland wouldn’t give specifics on the financial terms of Rose’s deal, but the total guaranteed money almost certainly is in seven figures. Casey said Rose generated over $3 million in sales and personally banked over $1 million in his best year, 2007.

“I’m not saying this to brag,” Rose says in the Sporting News interview, “but I’m the only retired player who could do this. … I¹ll approach it just like I did baseball. We¹re going to build this up, make a lot of money.

“And this city is the only city where this gig works. … (My) critics will say, ‘He’ll never get reinstated working in Las Vegas.’ They think I'm doing the same thing they do when they're on vacation. But I'm not on vacation. I'm working.

Rose refers to himself as “baseball’s best ambassador” because he interacts with so many vacationing fans in Sin City, “talking positive about the game of baseball--and baseball’s real easy to talk negative about today.”

He also believes he’s great at the autograph game--not good, but great--because of the way it stokes his famously competitive fire. A fire that’ll be burning even after 2016, if you believe Rose, as the men in business with him do.

“I'll work my ass off for them,” Rose said over breakfast at bluesman B.B. King’s restaurant in the Mirage. “I'll go to hell for them. They know they got a diamond in the rough, so to speak, because I'm a workaholic.”